fava or string?
that is the question, not to be confused with 'wittgenstein or ryle' since
it is well known that exclusively cretins are behaviorist, while the choice
between fava and string is hard to make, either can fill the funnel, but
with which consequence?
On Sat, Feb 18, 2017 at 2:00 PM, Donal McEvoy <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Witters is, like Ryle, a behaviourist,>
No W is not. And neither is Ryle a behaviourist in several important
senses, though Ryle once admitted his position might be stigmatised as
behaviourism "harmlessly enough".
As to Ryle, he is an anti-Cartesian in that he opposes the Cartesian
version of the split of mind and body. It is less clear what Ryle offers as
a replacement. What Ryle offers does put forward the importance of outward,
observable behaviour as a measure of inner states, but does it amount to
radical behaviourism of the sort that denies there are inner states of a
sort that are not constituted by behaviour? Almost certainly not: Ryle is
alert to the existence of all kinds of mental events and does not posit
that *these are constituted* by accompanying behaviours. Does Ryle even
claim that the accompanying behaviours provide the only logical criterion
for the existence of the inner states - would Ryle deny that I could feel a
sudden pain in my chest and yet outwardly behave (because I am on
television) as I would if I had felt no such pain? My guess is not: what
Ryle might do is fudge the issues while providing a framework with a thrust
that emphasises the role of outward, observable behaviour *in judging*
inner states (rather than *constituting* inner states).
Among the valuable points made by Popper in TSAIB: Ryle's
anti-Cartesianism is understandable given the untenable character of the
Cartesian account of the mind-body split but, on close examination, it
fudges the issue of whether there is nevertheless a mind-body split and if
so what is its character.
Regarding W, W is in my view even less of a behaviourist than Ryle
(depending what we mean by behaviourist). There is a massive difference
between (1) emphasising the role of outward behaviours in giving us
measures of inner states and (2) claiming inner states are reducible to
outward behaviours etc. There is also a massive difference between (1)
trying to show *that we could never say* 'what constitutes an inner
state' independent of any measures of such states in behaviourial terms and
(2) claiming that the inner state is constituted by its behaviourial
expression.
The later W *is not offering any theory* of the relation of mind and
body, indeed W makes clear there are no theses in his philosophy: the later
W is offering a therapeutic approach to disentangling conceptual confusions
that may arise from the commingling of language concerning 'mental
entities' and 'physical entities', but without offering a metaphysical
thesis as to the distinction between such entities. This, I suggest, is
because W views this distinction as something that cannot be said (in
general terms) but only shown (on a case by case basis).
Perhaps we should address this further. My suggestion is that Popper is
right in TSAIB to argue on the basis that, despite what many philosophers
may have suggested, the mind-body problem remains unsolved - and
undissolved by linguistic analysis.
In my view, W can be interpreted in a way that is consistent with this: W
does not claim to dissolve the metaphysical mind-body problem but to offer
a therapy to avoid philosophical confusions thrown up by this problem. W
leaves actual metaphysical problems untouched because, in W's view, it is
beyond our limited language to solve them: the metaphysical realm creates a
background against which we are provoked philosophically to try to say
things by way of solution to metaphysical problems but what we do is end up
talking nonsense - what W wants to do is fight against this nonsense but he
does not claim (1) this fight amounts to providing solutions to actual
metaphysical problems (2) that the metaphysical realm is a fiction. As to
(2), W does not think the metaphysical realm is a fiction (i.e.
non-existent, a la Logical Positivism) - it is simply that it is realm
about which we cannot express the truth given the limits of language.
Despite these limits of language (which render positive "theses"
senseless, so that "There are no theses in philosophy"), later W does think
we can show the truth or that *the truth is shown through the sense of
our language*.
To understand all this better we have to understand that we still in a
period of hangover from Hume and Kant, and that W's approach is very
attractive to those who want a position that embodies a measure of
anti-metaphysical positivism (as to what can philosophy can achieve, or
'say with sense') as well as Kantian sense of the depths of the
metaphysical realm. A large part of W's story is, however, how his
philosophy has been repeatedly hijacked by academic philosophers inclined
to anti-metaphysical positivism - a story that began with the Logical
Positivist misreading the TLP and continues with the 'behaviourist'
misreading of the later W and even to the so-called "New
Wittgensteinians".*
D
L
*The problem is that many of the "Old Wittgensteinians" aren't much
better, and much of what they put forward is elaborate fudge.
"e.g. "It is not the case that Donal has two heads" and "It is false that
Donal has two heads". So where does the gap come in?"
Between both heads? Just teasing.
Again,
i. The world is all that is the case.
may be rendered as having the form:
x. The S is P.
And we are considering here something like
xi. 0(The S is P)
-- where "0" stands for "it is false that..." (Logicians use '1' for truth
and '0' for falsity -- versus variants with "~". (I actually prefer an
inverted "T" for 'falsity") -- and
xii. ~(The world is all that is the case).
So let's go back to the original fragment in McEvoy's "Wittgenstein sends
us shopping":
"The TLP begins "The world iis all that is the case" -
which seems simple and straighforward at one level, b
ut what would it mean to deny it? What picture is given by
saying "It is false
that the world is all that is the case". What else could be the case?"
McEvoy's phrasing, "what picture is given by..." may possibly be
generalised to ANY proposition of the form "It is false that..."
Note that in fact, when McEvoy asks, "What else could be the case?", he is
not proffering (if that's the expression) a 'rhetorical question':
In possible-world semantics, surely 'possible states of affairs' may be
deemed part of the world.
(I'm sure Popper, being a bit of a Meinongian, would consider a possible
state of affairs part of what Popper calls his 'third world'. So one has to
be careful).
Grice is not too explicit as to the differing implicatures for 'it is
false that...' and 'it is not the case that...'.
But I'm sure that in a Russellian expansion of his favourite "The king of
France is not bald", the different implicatures become clearer.
There are syntactical approaches to "not" (Hilbert's formalism) that need
not deal with the concept of 'falsity'. It is only a 'semantic' conception
of 'not' (alla Tarski) that ascribes a 'truth-table' to this unary
operator. And the differing implicatures between 'it is false that...' and
'it is the not the case that...' are, of course, pragmatic, rather than
semantic, in nature. So one has to be careful, however 'interchangeable'
these two idioms may seem like.
McEvoy quotes Witters as arguing that '[philosophical explanation has] to
stop somewhere.'
This McEvoy retrieves from PI, rather than TLP, but as we see, even with
the very first proposal in TLP ("The world is all that is the case") we
find that counter-explanations to the effect that it may NOT be the case,
to all philosophers (Kripke, Leibniz), that the world is all that is the
case.
These counter-explanations need, in turn, to be addressed by further
counter-counter-explanations (Imagine a succession of "Why"? questions). If
the series stops somewhere, Witters does not say where. Perhaps he
implicates it.
Witters's point about the 'five' seems simpler. Witters is, like Ryle, a
behaviourist, and he thinks the explanation he gives making reference to
the way the shopkeeper ACTS (or 'behaves') is where the philosophical
explanation stops because
xiii. meaning =df use
for Witters, but never for Grice! In "Prolegomena" to "Logic and
Conversation" Grice actually makes a strong anti-Wittgensteinian point
about this. If in Wittgenstein's time, 'meaning is use' was considered sort
of a truism, by the time Grice is delivering his lectures, the opposite
slogan ("meaning is not use") seems to have become more fashionable. What
Grice is having in mind may well be Quine, who plays with 'meaning' and
'use' as applied to "if" in "Methods of Logic" (and which Strawson
discusses in his Introduction to "Philosophical Logic" -- Oxford readings
in philosophy).
And so on.
Cheers,
Speranza
